Rita C. Naremore’s research while affiliated with Indiana University Bloomington and other places

It is difficult to determine exactly the effects of chronic otitis media on early language development, in part because we do not know whether hearing loss resulting from otitis media is intermittent or constant, and in part because it is difficult to assess the precise language ability of very young children. This paper focuses on those aspects of language development which one might expect hearing impairment to affect, and presents several hypotheses about the possible effects of mild-to-moderate hearing loss on the earliest stages of language development.

This study evaluates children's performance on selected spatial prepositions and determines the age levels these prepositions are acquired in both receptive and expresive language, as revealed in tasks involving both two- and three-dimensional objects. Subjects were 80 children (40 males and 40 females), ranging in age from three years to four years and eleven months. All were native English speakers with no speech, hearing, or neurological disorders, and with normal intelligence. Results indicated a significant difference in test scores according to age (older children perform better than younger), task (comprehension scores higher than production scores), referent (three-dimensional tasks showing higher scores than two-dimensional tasks), and preposition. Children's use of selected spatial prepositions is dependent on the semantic complexity of the preposition. Prepositions whose meanings can be described in terms of simple topological notions are understood and used with greater facility than those involving dimensional or Euclidean spatial notions. When the prepositional variable interacts with age, dimension, task, age + dimension, age + task, dimension + task, and age + dimension + task, overall differential response are likely to occur.